The Federal Medical Center Lokoja, Kogi state was attacked by gunmen destroying properties worth millions and carted away with important documents. The hospital had scheduled a media briefing for the day to demand a COVID-19 screening centre in the state and to also speak about the challenges health workers are facing with regard to the disease when armed men arrived at the facility in three vehicles and shot sporadically hence dispersing the meeting.
Health workers were also said to have been harassed by the gunmen who took away laptops and vital documents. They were also said to have destroyed properties.
The governor of the state Yahaya Bello, on Tuesday said Nigerians are being made to accept the reality of COVID-19 “by force”. “The virus was created to “shorten the lifestyle of the people”, while asking residents not to accept what he described as “cut and paste COVID-19″.
The Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) has so far announced three cases of COVID-19 in Kogi, but the state government has insisted that the state is free of the disease. It has repeatedly accused the NCDC of falsifying COVID-19 cases in Kogi.
But the state government said on Monday it had partnered the United States Centre for Diseases Control (CDC) to set up a reference molecular laboratory for COVID-19 tests.
